Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Sorry. I forgot about it, although I have it written down in two places here. I am waiting for final confirmation from the Minister, Deputy Creed. The forum we envisage will bring all the stakeholders together. I will convene it and engage with it. It will be different in some way from the dairy and beef fora. It is about identifying problems but also about figuring out solutions. We have an organic focus group and different models of fora, and we are trying to get one that is tailor made for the horticulture sector. In December, I am going to a nursery stock farm in north Dublin, where I have been before, to see their issues. I have visited some of the people Senator Reilly mentioned who are involved in tomatoes, lettuce and scallions.I visited most of those people during the summer, as well as producers of strawberries down in Wexford. We are trying to create a forum that covers the four legs of it. Bloom was certainly a very good showcase of what is available. The downstream business figures from the Bloom festival, from within a month of it and from within a year of it are staggering for certain sectors in the wider horticulture family. Not everything benefits equally. Fresh vegetables are not big beneficiaries of it. I would say that nursery stock and cut flowers are the biggest beneficiaries. We export €14 million worth of non-food horticulture, which includes cut flowers. Amenity plants are being traded internationally. Daffodils are going to the United States and the United Arab Emirates. There is that sort of potential and we need more of it.

Brexit has done one positive thing for the specific sectors of agriculture that are in the eye of the storm: it has alerted an alarm for the absolute need to develop new markets. In September, the Minister, Deputy Creed, and I were in four countries in Asia. I was in Vietnam and Korea and the Minister was in China and Singapore. Beef was a significant part of both of our agendas in order to further that process. It was also an opportunity to showcase all Irish food. We had food evenings where we hosted restaurateurs, hoteliers, agents and food buyers to try to emphasise to them the benefits of Irish food. Origin Green is a huge marketing operation. We are the only country in the world that has a carbon navigating system by which we can tell what the carbon footprint of any product is. The three S's are safety, security and sustainability. That is what the marketing of Origin Green is out there to promote. It is gaining traction and we have a good reputation. It boils down to traceability.

However, it is slow. So much of our market depends on one particular destination, which always will be a significant market for us, as our nearest neighbour. Traditionally, long before the EU, we were major market traders, particularly for lower-value products. We have developed a value-added export business to the UK and to other countries. We really must make sure that we have some level of independence from that to give ourselves a better bargaining position. Nobody knows what is going to happen with Brexit. Not even the Prime Minister of the UK knows, when she triggers Article 50, whether she will get it through without the endorsement of the House of Commons, which is how it stands at the moment after the ruling of the UK's Supreme Court. We are in very uncertain times with regard to Brexit. The main market's positioning during Brexit and post-Brexit is uncertain. Sterling has a significant impact on everything we sell to that market.

Senator Mulherin asked a question about the disused mushroom facilities. That is a challenging issue. The Senator is from the west of Ireland and there are disused facilities there, as well as in other parts of the country. In parts of the country, there is Údarás na Gaeltachta and, in other parts, there are rural development companies. I think it will take ground-up initiatives. It will take people with ideas to come together, whether that is co-operatively, community-based or as a business, to develop ideas with the local enterprise offices and perhaps Teagasc and see what sort of ideas they will have and what uses they can be put to. They could create jobs and economic activity around them. I believe it would have to be profitable. There will have to be a business plan.

To be honest, I do not think I can speculate on what would actually fit all of the facilities. In fairness, there was consolidation from 600 mushroom businesses down to under 100 over a 15 or 20-year period. That is a significant consolidation. I know plenty of people who were in that business and exited it as scale became very important. Even within those 70-odd growers, as Senator Boyhan said, some of the bigger growers have satellite producers who put their name on the products. That is very welcome, but without that core centre, those satellite growers would not be of a big enough scale. It is a bit like egg production. The same principle applies in which there are satellite growers producing for a central company. I attended a poultry and chicken conference last week or the week before in the constituency of Cavan-Monaghan. It is the same principle. It will only work if it has a business case in a local area. The kinds of supports that are out there are important. If the business is worthwhile, local enterprise offices, and maybe Údarás na Gaeltachta in some areas, could offer supports on how to carry out feasibility studies and develop business plans. That is what the local enterprise offices are there to do.

Did I miss any points?